Alohapolitics.com

Daily Kos: They are waving American flags…
They are waving American flags.

Hotel guests catch the wave of stand-up paddle surfing - Pacific Business News (Honolulu):

“We’ve seen a tremendous push from visitors in the past six months,” said Clyde Aikau, who runs Aikau Pure Hawaiian Surf Academy at the Hilton Hawaiian Village Beach Resort & Spa. “It’s mainly because it’s a great form of exercise.”

Aikau, brother of the late surfing legend Eddie Aikau, offers tourists lessons in the Hilton’s recently cleaned-up lagoon rather than take them out to nearby surf breaks such as Kaiser Bowls.

“It’s best to have the water nice and flat, and with as little wind as possible,” Aikau said.

Ilan Goldenberg: Not a Gaffe: A Fundamental Misunderstanding of Iraq

John McCain made a mistake this evening, which as far as I’m concerned, disqualifies him from being president. It is so appalling and so factually wrong that I’m actually sitting here wondering who McCain’s advisers are. This isn’t some gaffe where he talks about the Iraq-Pakistan border. It’s a real misunderstanding of what has happened in Iraq over the past year. It is even more disturbing because according to John McCain, Iraq is the central front in the “war on terror.” If we are going to have an Iraq-centric policy, he should at least understand what he is talking about.

More about McSameMcCain On The Run: Cancels Press Availability

CBS covers up for McSame’s mistakes by rediting his interview. This is pretty disgusting. If I were Katie Couric I would scream to high heavens because it is her reputatiuon it sullies.

More about McSame’s basic lack of understanding of the situation.

MSM HAMMERS McSame !!! (Video plus Stunning Photos)

I’m sad that Katie Couric has turned out to be such a failed journalist. Poor wee Kaite!

Mass layoffs up in Hawaii in June - Pacific Business News (Honolulu):

There were six “mass layoffs” in Hawaii in June, which resulted in the loss of 783 jobs for at least 31 days, according to the U.S. Department of Labor on Wednesday.

In June 2007, there were five mass layoff events that resulted in the loss of 413 jobs.

Councilwoman jumps in to challenge Hannemann in Honolulu mayor’s race | HonoluluAdvertiser.com | The Honolulu Advertiser

City Councilwoman Ann Kobayashi gave up her uncontested seat to run for mayor yesterday, squaring off against Mayor Mufi Hannemann in a race that’s certain to hinge in large part on the city’s planned $3.7 billion elevated commuter system.

I got this over the weekend and have been remiss in not posting it sooner. This is one of the most important issues of the day. Contact Bob Babson for more information about this lawsuit and his other actions to make our elections secure and honest.
July 18, 2008

Re: Lawsuit to stop the transmission of votes over telephone lines and/or the internet.

Aloha,

We filed the lawsuit on July 14, 2008. It is civil # 08-1-0378(3). It has been assigned to Judge Cardoza. I’m enclosing it for you to read. It is a very simple lawsuit. We are asking the Judge to order the Hawaii Chief Elections Officer to stop using telephone lines or the internet for transmitting ballot counts and election results for final tabulation until such time as administrative rules can be legally promulgated in accordance with Hawaii Administrative Law, Chapter 91, HRS, and all other laws can be legally complied with also.

Hart InterCivic (Hart) of Austin, Texas, has the contract to conduct elections for the State of Hawaii. They write the software and design the hardware and it is top secret. No one can inspect it because it is “proprietary property.” They claim the version they are using has been inspected by an independent testing agency (ITA) on the mainland. But we don’t know if what they inspected is the same as what is actually used here in Hawaii. We must blindly trust them to be honest.

Each voting machine at the precincts has a memory card with votes on it. After the polls close on election day, the current procedure is to forward all memory cards to the county count center (8th floor of the Maui County Building for Maui) and hand them to the Hart technician who then “reads” them into the Hart tabulator (a laptop in 2006). The laptop is connected to a telephone line and the vote count files are then supposedly transmitted directly to the State count center using a wide area network (WAN). WAN’s use the internet. We believe the transmission method is either by email with files attached or file transfer protocol (FTP).

Not only can outsiders hack into anything on the internet but we believe Hart itself, our election vendor, could actually transmit the files to a bogus remote email address or a remote website where the files could be flipped and immediately transmitted directly onto the State count center. Flipping votes means taking votes from one candidate and giving them to another. Since the total vote count remains the same, no one would know the difference. On top of all of this, the Office of Elections never manually counts the absentee ballots precinct (aka AB-Mail) because it is “too big.” So there you have it. Hart could easily flip votes in the AB-Mail precinct and no one would ever know. AB-Mail is the biggest precinct in all four counties.

For the above reasons, we believe it is imperative to ban the use of any telephone or internet connections to any voting machines or tabulators used by any election vendor. Instead, the memory cards could easily be flown to the State Capitol and “read” directly into Hart’s tabulator there. The polls close at 6 pm and the memory cards could be at the airport by 8 pm and arrive in Honolulu by 9 pm and driven to the State count center in plenty of time to tabulate the results by 11 pm which is the usual release time for the final votes in Hawaii elections. Memory cards from a few outlying precincts in the State might not get to Honolulu until the next day for the final, final vote results. But I believe the people of Hawaii would readily accept this knowing that it has removed the huge risk of flipping votes by flying them to Honolulu.

This lawsuit could have national implications, because most states do transmit their votes over telephone lines and the internet and are therefore vulnerable to the same vote flipping by election vendors as described above. Eighty percent of the votes counted in America are counted by just four election vendors: Hart InterCivic, Election Systems and Software, Diebold and Sequoia. It is hoped that voters and elected officials in all states will move in the direction of demanding and passing laws to ban the use of telephone lines and the internet for all election vendors in all 50 states.

Our lawyer, Lance Collins, Esq., is representing us pro bono. However, we, the plaintiffs, have agreed to pay all court costs, sheriff fees, copies, postage, etc. If you would like to help support this worthy cause for Democracy (every vote counted accurately), please consider making a small donation, such as $25.00 or $50.00, to our lawyer to help with the court costs. Please make your check out to Lance D. Collins, Esq., and mail it to 2070 W. Vineyard, Suite 5, Wailuku, HI 96793-1618.

Please forward this message onto your friends in all 50 states. We must get the word out if we are to ever have honest elections.

Thank you very much for your support.

Sincerely,

Bob Babson

2006 Maui Election Observer

3371 Keha Drive

Kihei, HI 96753

808 874-1166

babsonb001@hawaii.rr.com

Attachments:

1. The Lawsuit filed July 14, 2008.

2. OpEdNews article dated June 9, 2008: “The Democratic Primaries 2008: Managing Electoral Dynamics Via Covert Vote-Count Manipulation.”

3. Forbes article date July 17, 2008: “Hackable Broadband Left Unpatched.”

Hawaii leads US for cancer survival rate | starbulletin.com | News | /2008/07/20/

People with cancer in Hawaii are more likely to survive the disease than people who live in other states and even some countries, according to an international study.

Where you live makes a difference when it comes to cancer survival, the study found.

It’s not clear why Hawaii stands out for cancer survival, researchers said, suggesting it could be because of better access to health care or a healthier lifestyle and less stress.

This is an interesting essay on how the press and the MSM work in manipulating events via public opinion. Can you imagine what the Hawaii News would be like if our News Presenters on TV deviated from the scripts written by caveat and unspoken rules in their company’s corporate offices?
Glenn Greenwald - Salon.com
Rendering public opinion irrelevant

One of the most striking aspects of our political discourse, particularly during election time, is how efficiently certain views that deviate from the elite consensus are banished from sight — simply prohibited — even when those views are held by the vast majority of citizens.

The following story is a nasty dose of cold water in face on a Sunday morning. I wonder how it will affect us in Hawaii? I’m more and more frightened by this potential for a huge financial collapse. Wassup with this? Happy Sunday! The writer has a good track record of predictions as well as an impressive set of links to the back up documents.

Daily Kos: 8,500 U.S. banks; many will die soon(updated 3x)

I called the death of Indymac Bancorp on Monday, July 7th. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation seized Indymac on Friday, July 11th.

I called the implosion of the two Government Sponsored Entities in the mortgage business, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac on Wednesday, July 9th. Sunday, July 13th the White House announced a bailout for them.

Want to know what happens next? It’s ape ass ugly and it’s going to happen to you, so don’t say I didn’t warn you.